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About Me

I am a Ph.D. student at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. I study the History of Biblical Interpretation, which includes Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. My interests are religion, politics, TV, movies, and reading.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Ambrose's Nixon: Ruin and Recovery 7

In this blog post, I'll highlight two passages from Stephen Ambrose's Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990.
We're in the Watergate scandal, and President Richard Nixon's former
counsel, John Dean, has testified before Congress that Nixon engaged in a
cover-up and obstruction of justice regarding the break-in of
Republicans into the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the
Watergate hotel. Dean was saying that Nixon was specifically trying to
obscure the possible connection of that burglary with high officials in
the White House.

1. On page 194, Ambrose says: "To most
Americans, the distinctly different reactions of Nixon and [John] Dean
answered the question, Who was telling the truth? Dean wanted the tapes
played, in full, in public. Nixon wanted the tapes to be kept sealed
within the White House, where he could continue to make selective use of
them."

Nixon recorded his conversations within the White House,
and so there were tapes. According to Ambrose, Dean called for the
tapes to be played in full, whereas Nixon only wanted to make selective
use of them to exonerate himself. That sounded fishy to most Americans,
Ambrose narrates. My understanding of Ambrose is that Nixon could have
destroyed the tapes before they were subpoenaed, since they were his
own property. After the tapes related to Watergate were subpoenaed,
however, it was a different story.
2. Nixon gave a speech about Watergate, and, on page 209, Ambrose states:

"Nixon
claimed in his memoirs that the speech 'hit a responsive chord. The
numbers of telegrams and phone calls to the White House immediately
after it was over were the biggest since the says of my Vietnam
speeches. People were tired of Watergate.' Many of those calls and
telegrams were manufactured by his own aides, as they always did after a
major speech. It gave the boss a boost to see the telegrams stacked on
his desk."

Ambrose actually makes this point about the telegrams
more than once, largely in volume 2 of his Nixon trilogy. Were these
aides manufacturing the telegrams, as in making up people? Or were they
contacting people who were largely sympathetic to Nixon and asking them
to send telegrams, to make Nixon feel better and to give the aura of
widespread support for Nixon?